Tucked in the $209 billion budget lawmakers passed last month is a budget rider allocating $500,000 for a nonprofit to publish the Texas Almanac. The guide of important Texas facts, figures and maps has been around for more than 150 years, but until recently, it had managed to thrive as a for-profit publication.

In San Antonio, officials want to make Alamo Plaza more appealing to both tourists and residents, but there isn't a consensus on the best way to do that. Some want vendors and entertainment on the premises, but others say that would be disrespectful to the memory of the soldiers who fought and died for Texas' freedom.

A Juneteenth monument was built for the state Capitol, but it won't be installed after all. Among the concerns raised: Some said one of the monument's statues looked too much like a legislator who pushed through the bill to build the monument. Now, a new monument will come to the Capitol grounds instead.

The Sons of Confederate Veterans group says the historical marker it wants to install on the Texas Capitol grounds simply explains an interesting and important part of Texas history. Critics, including a dozen lawmakers, say it's another effort to revise the group's history of racism and slavery.

With the strum of a guitar and the whine of fiddle strings, Ray Benson and two other members of his band Asleep At The Wheel kicked off a rally Thursday to support the Texas Historical Commission, which faces deep budget cuts.

Two agencies that Gov. Rick Perry has suggested suspending funding for — the Texas Historical Commission and the Texas Commission on the Arts — came before House Appropriations this morning. And lawmakers didn't seem particularly apt to shutter them.

If you’re going to make a bunch of people mad, you should make sure you’re getting something for it. The proposed budget cuts Gov. Rick Perry laid out in his State of the State speech — defunding the states arts and historical commissions, for example — are more symbolic than lucrative and trivialize the cuts that are being made elsewhere in state services and programs.

Gov. Rick Perry suggests that lawmakers should suspend funding to two state agencies — the Texas Commission on the Arts and the Texas Historical Commission — because they don’t provide “mission-critical” services. But what do they do? What won’t get done without them? And would eliminating the Historical Commission actually invite federal intervention?

Creative industries — from advertising to dance companies to book publishing — generate $4.5 billion per year in economic activity for Texas, according to a new report released by the Texas Cultural Trust in association with the Texas Commission on the Arts. The report features projects in communities like Amarillo, El Paso, Rockport, Texarkana and the tiny, north central Texas town of Clifton, population 3,795. “It’s more than fluff,” says Amy Barbee, the Trust's executive director. “We want to tell the story that the arts truly are economic development.”

Sixty-nine years ago, the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor compelled the U.S. to join World War II — and led to the internment of thousands of Japanese, German and Italian Americans. As Matt Largey of KUT News reports, researchers are now trying to preserve and memorialize those sites in Texas.
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Since 1999, dozens of county courthouses — some dating to the 19th century — have been spruced up with the help of state funding, and workers have uncovered old artwork or other historic features. But advocates fear that the renovation program will be yet another casualty of the coming biennial budget shortfall.